Wednesday, March 14, 2007

A Grimm Middle East

People who believe that the age of Faerie reached its height in the German princedoms of the nineteenth century must've avoided reading newspapers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The rest of us realise that they simply moved from the nursery to the press rooms of various aggressive countries. The fairy tale is still very much alive, but the wicked witches and big bad wolves have been replaced with Islamofascists and mad mullahs.

The post-911 world could easily be relabelled as the Age of Faerie Redux as careful readers will already know. From the Falling Towers to the War Against Low Income Housing in Afghanistan to the collection of tales surrounding the Invasion of Baghdad put the Brothers Grimm to shame.

One of the more recent yarns from this growing collection is from last summer when the Israelis launched a crippling assault on the civilians of Lebanon and the Gaza under the aegis of repatriating less than a handful of kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Prime Minister Olmert's recently leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee show the official reasons to be just another tall tale. Jonathon Cook's latest article, Olmert's Testimony Reveals the Real Goal of the War in Lebanon is an excellent example of how modern fairy tales can be debunked. Remember, witches that were burned as brides of Satan were likely village healers who stood in the way of the Church's monopoly of power and in the real world wolves don't eat children.

1 comment:

witches that were burned as brides of Satan were likely village healers who stood in the way of the Church's monopoly of power

Village healers my ass. They were anti-freedom, anti-medicine, anti-god. andti-freedom. These satanic insurgents nearly prevented children from enjoying the comraderie of priests. If they hadn't been burned to the stake eveyday would be halloween without the candy. Just think about that wiccan appeaser.